This report was created with the collaboration of Richard Ryan, barrister at Blakiston Chambers. As soon as once more Richard is making a distinction for all the UK drone business.
Public scrutiny over the protection of police drone operations is intensifying after the Nationwide Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) issued a blunt refusal to reveal danger assessments and security summaries for its controversial Past Visible Line of Sight (BVLOS) and ‘Drones as First Responders’ (DFR) trials.
The refusal, framed as a measure to forestall the police physique from exceeding the statutory value restrict for Freedom of Data (FOI) requests, uncovered a worrying lack of centralised record-keeping for what the NPCC itself describes as its “core enterprise”.
The refusal discover, issued on 5 December 2025 by the Nationwide Police Freedom of Data and Information Safety Unit, cited Part 17 and Part 12 of the FOIA, claiming the price of compliance would exceed the ‘acceptable restrict’ of £450, equating to greater than 18 hours of labor.
The vast majority of this burden stemmed from a request for security case summaries and operational ideas associated to BVLOS and DFR trials (Query 4). Crucially, the NPCC admitted that “there isn’t any single repository for this data”.
As an alternative, the data—which covers ideas, use instances, security instances together with danger identification, mitigation, coaching, procurement, resting and analysis, stakeholder engagement, information seize and recording and so forth—is scattered throughout workers folders and mailboxes, masking the three-year BVLOS Pathway Programme and DFR, which has run for 2 years.
Preliminary handbook searches performed by the NPCC confirmed that a minimum of 28 people would wish to finish these searches.
A dip pattern of only one particular person conducting key phrase searches for ‘BVLOS’ returned 13,003 outcomes, whereas ‘Drones as First Responders’ returned 10,331 outcomes respectively, demonstrating the dimensions of the retrieval drawback.
The NPCC’s choice to refuse entry to those very important paperwork leaves the general public unable to scrutinise the protection protocols underpinning the superior drone operations now being piloted in areas together with London and Coventry.
Accident Investigation Confirmed
The refusal comes within the wake of a selected incident that raised critical public concern: the Isle of Sheppey incident on 2 August 2025, involving a Kent Police drone putting an overhead cable and injuring a toddler.
Regardless of the NPCC refusing to supply data on the Isle of Sheppey incident, advising the requester to contact the related native pressure, Kent Constabulary, immediately, two impartial aviation our bodies confirmed their involvement.
The Air Accidents Investigation Department (AAIB) confirmed it was notified of the incidence on the night of 2nd August 2025 and instantly started a security investigation underneath the reference AAIB-31099. Moreover, the AAIB revealed that the incident is much from remoted; since 1 January 2023, the AAIB has obtained 10 notifications involving police-operated Unmanned Plane Techniques (UAS), resulting in the graduation of six security investigations.
Regulatory Opacity and Security Information Blocked
The response from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) highlighted important regulatory gaps surrounding state-operated police drones.
The CAA confirmed it was notified of the Isle of Sheppey incident by the AAIB on 6 August 2025, however acknowledged it’s “not conducting an investigation”. Extra critically, the CAA admitted it “doesn’t maintain steering nor a memorandum of understanding” particularly governing incident notification or investigation duties for state plane (police) drones.
In a transfer that severely limits public entry to system-wide security data, the CAA invoked Part 44(2) of the FOIA to neither verify nor deny holding statistical summaries or anonymised Obligatory Prevalence Report (MOR) information regarding police-UAS accidents.
The CAA claimed that releasing this MOR information is prohibited underneath Assimilated Regulation (EU) No. 376/2014, arguing that efficient incidence reporting depends on belief, and disclosure is just permitted for the aim of “sustaining or enhancing aviation security”.
Whereas the AAIB suggested that it doesn’t maintain statistical MOR data and directed the requester to the CAA, the CAA’s choice to make use of a regulatory exemption to dam affirmation of whether or not the information even exists raises critical questions concerning the transparency of security reporting inside Britain’s airspace.
Associated
Uncover extra from sUAS Information
Subscribe to get the most recent posts despatched to your e mail.